The discovery of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell technology promises to revolutionize our understanding of human disease and to allow the development of new cellular therapies for regenerative medicine applications. The ability to reprogram a patient's fibroblasts to iPS cells creates the opportunity to expand human cells with a specific genetic defect and to study that defect in a defined cell population, either to understand the basic biology of the disease or to study potential therapeutics. Furthermore, the genetic defects in iPS cells can be repaired and the iPS cells used as a source for cellular therapies after differentiation to specific cell lineages. Although tremendous strides have been made in recent years in treating human disease, replacing damaged tissue remains almost completely beyond our grasp. Harnessing human iPS stem cells for this purpose will open completely new areas of regenerative medicine. However, a limited understanding of iPS cell self-renewal and differentiation is a major roadblock in realizing this long-term goal.
One shared characteristic of iPS cells and adult stem cells that reside in many of our tissues is the ability to self-renew. Self-renewal is the ability of a stem cell to divide and give rise to a daughter cell that is undifferentiated and capable of giving rise to all the same lineages as the parent stem cell. Senescence pathways – pathways that cause dividing cells to permanently stop dividing – represents a significant barrier in the reprogramming process to engineer new iPS cells. Understanding how iPS cells self-renew is critical for determining how to maintain these cells, how to differentiate them toward specific tissue lineages and how to expand more committed stem cells or progenitor cells in cell culture.
In this proposal, we investigate the molecular mechanism of self-renewal and senescence in human iPS cells using skin cells isolated from patients with a defect in the enzyme telomerase. Telomerase is an enzyme complex expressed in embryonic stem cells, some tissue stem cells and in almost all human cancers. Most differentiated cells lack telomerase expression. Telomerase adds DNA repeats to structures at the ends of our chromosomes, termed telomeres. Telomeres are very important in protecting chromosome ends and in preventing chromosome ends from breaking down or sticking to other ends inappropriately. By maintaining telomeres, telomerase supports the ability of stem cells to divide a large number of times. People with telomerase mutations develop a stem cell disease – dykeratosis congenita. In this disease, patients have defects in skin, blood and lung – tissues that depend on tissue stem cell function to maintain these organs during life. We will reprogram skin cells from dyskeratosis patients to understand how senescence responses limit iPS cell self-renewal and differentiation to specific cell lineages.

Statement of Benefit to California:

This proposal will benefit California and its citizen in two general ways. First, I have recruited new scientists to California from Texas and from Brazil to work on this proposal. These are new taxpayers and consumers, which will benefit local businesses. They would have been less likely to come to California in the absence of the CIRM program and its strong emphasis on human stem cell biology. Second, this novel grant will generate new intellectual property in the form of patents. These patents may in fact be licensed to California companies or be used to support the formation of new start-up companies. The growth of such companies has historically fueled much of the profound growth in California. The future of California is linked to new technologies in the stem cell, biotechnology and other technology.

Progress Report:

Over the past year, we have analyzed five induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell lines engineered from different individuals with a genetic stem cell disease. Dyskeratosis congenita is a rare disease affecting stem cells in multiple tissues. Patients with dyskeratosis congenita develop life-threatening bone marrow failure and pulmonary fibrosis, and are highly prone to cancers. In addition, they develop defects in skin, nails and many other organs. Dyskeratosis congenita is caused by mutations in an enzyme - telomerase - that is particularly important in stem cells. Telomerase elongates telomeres, caps that protect chromosome ends. If telomerase is defective, telomeres shorten and loss of the protective cap at telomeres can cause serious problems in stem cells. It has been very difficult to study this disease because isolating stem cells from dyskeratosis congenita patients is challenging. To overcome this problem, we engineered iPS cells from five patients. This is a way to change skin cells into cells that closely resemble embryonic stem cells - stem cells that can give rise to all tissues within the body. We studied these iPS cells from dyskeratosis congenita patients and found that the type of effects on telomerase were very specific and depended on the specific gene that is mutated in the patient. For example, mutations in TERT, the catalytic protein in the telomerase complex, resulted in a 50% reduction in telomerase activity in the patient's iPS cells. In contrast, mutations in the protein dyskerin, seen in the X-linked form of the disease, reduced telomerase activity by a much greater amount - 90% compared to controls. Mutations in another telomerase protein, TCAB1, left telomerase activity unaffected, but made the enzyme mislocalize within the nucleus. We studied how telomeres elongated with reprogramming of skin cells to iPSCs for each patient. Normal cells from healthy people show significant elongation of telomeres during the making of iPSCs, because telomerase is reactivated during this process. For TERT-mutant patients, elongation still happened, but elongation was significantly blunted. For dyskerin-mutant iPS cells and TCAB1-mutant iPS cells, elongation was completely blocked by the mutations and instead, telomeres shortened during this process and with passage in culture. Importantly, the much more severe telomere defect in dyskerin-mutant and TCAB1-mutant cells corresponds closely with the severity of the disease in the patients themselves. Our data show that iPS cells are a very accurate system for studying dyskeratosis congenita and revealed for the first time that the severity of the disease correlates with the severity of the telomerase defect in stem cells. These findings create new opportunities to study stem cell diseases in cell culture and to develop therapies that could specifically reverse the disease defect.

Over the past year, we have generated and analyzed new induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell lines engineered from different individuals with a genetic stem cell disease. Dyskeratosis congenita is a rare disease affecting stem cells in multiple tissues. Patients with dyskeratosis congenita develop life-threatening bone marrow failure and pulmonary fibrosis, and are highly prone to cancers. In addition, they develop defects in skin, nails and many other organs. Dyskeratosis congenita is caused by mutations in an enzyme - telomerase - that is particularly important in stem cells. Telomerase elongates telomeres, caps that protect chromosome ends. If telomerase is defective, telomeres shorten and loss of the protective cap at telomeres can cause serious problems in stem cells. It has been very difficult to study this disease because isolating stem cells from dyskeratosis congenita patients is challenging. To overcome this problem, we engineered iPS cells from dyskeratosis congenita patients. This is a way to change skin cells into cells that closely resemble embryonic stem cells - stem cells that can give rise to all tissues within the body. We studied these iPS cells from dyskeratosis congenita patients and found that the type of effects on telomerase were very specific and depended on the specific gene that is mutated in the patient. Normal cells from healthy people show significant elongation of telomeres during the making of iPSCs, because telomerase is reactivated during this process. In iPS cells from patients with dyskeratosis congenita by contrast, telomere elongation during reprogramming is compromised. These findings create new opportunities to study stem cell diseases in cell culture and to develop therapies that could specifically reverse the disease defect.

Over the past year, we have generated and analyzed new induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell lines engineered from individuals with a genetic stem cell disease. Dyskeratosis congenita is a rare disease affecting stem cells in multiple tissues. Patients with dyskeratosis congenita develop life-threatening bone marrow failure and pulmonary fibrosis, and are highly prone to cancers. In addition, they develop defects in skin, nails and many other organs. Dyskeratosis congenita is caused by mutations in an enzyme - telomerase - that is particularly important in stem cells. Telomerase elongates telomeres, caps that protect chromosome ends. If telomerase is defective, telomeres shorten and loss of the protective cap at telomeres can cause serious problems in stem cells. It has been very difficult to study this disease because isolating stem cells from dyskeratosis congenita patients is challenging. To overcome this problem, we engineered iPS cells from dyskeratosis congenita patients. This is a way to change skin cells into cells that closely resemble embryonic stem cells - stem cells that can give rise to all tissues within the body. We studied these iPS cells from dyskeratosis congenita patients and found that the type of effects on telomerase were very specific and depended on the specific gene that is mutated in the patient. Normal cells from healthy people show significant elongation of telomeres during the making of iPSCs, because telomerase is reactivated during this process. In iPS cells from patients with dyskeratosis congenita by contrast, telomere elongation during reprogramming is compromised. These findings create new opportunities to study stem cell diseases in cell culture and to develop therapies that could specifically reverse the disease defect.a